[Narrator]: As you approach a stray cat, it looks up to you with its pupils thin as a needle...

[Cat]: 'TIS A TERRIBLE DAY, INNIT?

*shows dialogue options*

Divinity: Original Sin 2 has reached the new heights of what it is to be expected on an Indie Game. Made by Larian Studios, it was able to level with AAA games that it even surpasses the standards, regardless of its flaws.

You'll play as your own character in the story, and journey through unique encounters in the world of Rivellon finding the answer to the cause of the Void's awakening. You could also play as one of the five main characters with their own unique story if character creation is not your thing.

The game is very similar to its previous title, Divinity: Original Sin (DOS1). There may be changes, but there's nothing too drastic as far as I've observed.

STORY

DOS2 moved towards a more interesting Plot. While it still does have DOS1's lighthearted "HaHa"s, the studio was able to put the humor at the right spot. In a way, they were able to make a decently captivating tale for an RPG. What's so interesting about the plot's flow is that the game doesn't make you feel like you need to save the world because when you want to go somewhere, doing so will progress your main story. The linearity is barely present that I didn't even know which quest I should keep my focus on my first playthrough.

It's quite unfortunate how the game treats the Party Interaction on the whole story as it progresses since it had less... interaction. Back in DOS1's singleplayer party interaction, you're able to choose a dialogue for everyone. DOS2 removed that feature and only allows you to choose a dialogue for your main character only; however, in turn they added an Attitude system, so your party members and everyone else in the game have their own morals and beliefs. In the end, it sadly makes your party less replayable on your next playthroughs.

GAMEPLAY

On the matter of the game's Quest System, I become lost throughout my first playthrough. Given that most of your progress relates to the main story, a quest that I've ignored for an in-game day (since I'm focusing on a particular quest at that time) suddenly updates along with the quest I'm currently taking. There are some cases that during an update to my current quest, a new quest opens up in my quest log. In a long run, my quest log became flooded to a point that I don't know where to start after finishing my current quest.

The turn-based Combat System is really great. Given how there's hundreds of skills and hardly countable ways of killing an enemy, the fact that height and wall-covers matter, it's hard to get bored of it. Unlike many turn-based games, the Original Sin series shines on how your surroundings affects your and your enemy's strategy. The lit torch stand, the oil puddle poured near an explosive barrel, the sea shore, everything is interactive. In DOS2, the height advantage was a great addition.

The game's Challenge is the one that sparks its replayability. It's not just how unfair some items/skills are, it's the moment when the AI actually knows how and where to use the environment and situation to their advantage. Once you've come up with a different build, their playstyle changes. They are annoyingly smart that sometimes they're three turns ahead of you if you're not aware enough.

Carelessly set a trap mine near an enemy, one of them will then teleport you on top of it. Enemies even lean behind a wall just so your Rogue character can't backstab him/her. Although, there may come a time when a hazardous area is too wide, the AI keeps on walking around the said area instead of standing still which kills them faster. The AI still has its terrible moments sadly.

AESTHETICS

Comparing the two of the series, DOS2 was able to utilize more graphical features which made it far more detailed than DOS1. It shifted from a cartoony colorful vibe into a more realistic and bleak environment. Even so, the Graphics were decent at best.

The Music score is an improvement from the previous title. Just comparing the two themes, you could say that they have more budget this time haha. It's interesting how you could select your character's instrument theme, so you could hear a particular instrument on certain occasions depending on your character's instrument theme. As much as how catchiness goes however, it's not as grand as what I always hear from Bioware and Bethesda games. For short, D:OS2's music is ingenuinely good.

For a game that lacks flashy CGI cinematics, they were able to compensate it with the Voice Dialogues. You've gotta hand it to the developers for the character and npc voices being expressive. It's interesting how most of them have something to say inside and outside of the conversation.

FEATURES

For a turn-based game, the Playability is good. Besides the 4 player multiplayer, there's couch co-op and controller support. The game is playable in any way but 3-4 splitscreen multiplayer, yet it's still rare to find such accessibility this time around in video games.

Game Master Mode is a cool feature that you can't believe it's included on the standard game. Though, I'm not fond of Dungeons and Dragons, it really seems that's what it's trying to make out of this game mode. In my case, this is a casual DnD that includes the game's character abilities and such. An interesting mode to say the least.

I ALWAYS have to check on Wiki if there's any follow-through. Some quests will stay in the log forever until you move on to the next Act.

❌ Unvoiced Dialogues ( - 0.05 ):

Some NPC/ally dialogues weren't fully voiced.

OVERALL: 8.75/10

~ You know what, pen & paper games aren't so boring after all.

OVERALL (w/ deductions): 7.85/10~ A cracked pearl this game is.

REMARKS

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is obviously not for everyone to love. It's neither an Action RPG like Diablo that the majority leans on nor a hardcore RPG like Baldur's Gate. It's definitely not for those who hates reading a lot of texts as well. I would recommend this to anyone who, for once, has played and liked turn-based games because this one's the best of the genre as I'm writing this review. For me, it's something between hardcore and casual of the main genre.

I am a very casual gamer. I played WoW many years ago obsessively, and since then have really only gotten into a couple of flings with games. As someone who works full time, I don't have the time (or, honestly, the interest) in playing a game that requires me to play ALL THE TIME to keep up with everyone else. Adversely, I'm usually pretty bored with single player games. I also hate turn-based games. Despite that, I was browsing the most-purchased in the Steam store and decided on buying this game after reading the reviews.

This game took me about a month to complete, and I clocked in 75 hours. I can't even remember the last time a campaign took me more than 8 hours.... I actually was interested in what NPC's had to say, talked to everyone, opened every chest, etc. Not because I felt I had to, but because I really loved the game that much. Also, if I had played this game without looking up most of the quests online, it would've taken me at least double that time.

The combat was super fun, even though it was turn based. I was constantly looking for new spellbooks, planning out my rotations, etc. It was also challenging - I really had to make sure my party was well-equipped and balanced in their abilities. There were some fights I had to retry a few times, and it felt like more of a fun challenge than a tedious part of the gameplay.

After finishing the game, I'm going to go back and replay it a second time with a different strategy and a slightly higher difficulty.

I loved everything about this game, even though it's not my usual style of game at all - anyone who's on the fence, I definitely recommend it!

This is one of the best rpg I've ever played, I can't really add more to what has already been said.The only, little downside is the online arena. While I understand that not allowing you to use your own characters makes thhe matches more balanced, using pre-made characters destroys the spirit of the rpg. Perhaps you could allow to set skills and abilities of the pre-made characters?

Full disclosure - the only other game in the Divinity series I've ever played to completion is Dragon Commander, which couldn't be more different than this one.

I didn't enjoy Original Sin 1. I didn't get it. It was so strange to me - because it was a mechanics-focused RPG. Everything interacted with everything else, and the possibilities seemed endless. The story didn't grab me, and such things are important in a cRPG, and so I eventually abandoned it.

Initially, I was afraid I would feel the same about Original Sin 2. The first act isn't particularly strong, but thankfully, I endured for enough time for the story to sink its hooks into me. Ironically enough, it was only then that I realized all of Original Sin 2's virtues, which have little to nothing to do with its plot.

The Mechanics

Original Sin 2, like its predecessor, is about the absolutely ludicrous shenanigans you can pull off both in and out of combat. Environmental hazards are everywhere, from water to blood to poison to ice to fire- and they interact in often explosive ways to different skills, items and spells. The game gives you access to the game-changing Teleport skill very early on, and this is what blows the whole thing wide open. With it, you can teleport any character or item, anywhere within sight. The sheer amount of battlefield and exploration applications were enough for me to force all my party members to learn it. Teleport party members across chasms, onto vantage points. Teleport distant enemies to kill zones, environmental hazards, or on top of one another.

Another beautiful example is the dialogue system. Namely - dialogue only freezes the characters that are actively engaged in said dialogue. Whilst your main character is speaking to a soon-to-be-hostile NPC, the rest of your party can get into position, set up traps and hazards, pickpocket the distracted NPC, or even teleport them around the map, all before combat even starts.

Divinity Original Sin 2 is very exploitable by nature. The amount of cheese strategies available to creative players is utterly disgusting - and this is clearly intentional, and I love Larian for it. I watched a video that involved the almost useless Telekinesis skill, which is used solely for moving and picking up objects at the distance - used to instagib monsters and NPCs by way of shoving an ultra-heavy crate filled with other, ultra-heavy crates.

You can customize your characters to a laudable degree, even with the option of making them Undead, which of course brings all sorts of wacky interactions, such as having to steal faces not to be attacked on sight, being damaged by healing but healed by poison. You can create your characters if you wish, or you can use pre-built characters the game already has. In truth, there is no downside to this. The advantage of pre-built characters is that they have their own voice actors, personalities and, critically, personal quests which they progress through along with the game's main quest. You can customize everything else about them during character creation - class, attributes, even appearance. There are very few upsides to playing a non-pre-built character.

You can have a party of up to 4 characters (there are 6 pre-built characters), or up to two Lone Wolves(a talent which makes characters stronger, but limits them to a party of two). You must choose a -main- character, though you can choose any among your party to partake in dialogue. You will largely see the world through the eyes of your chosen main character.

tl;dr - A blast. I was foolish not to have realized it before.

The Story and Characters

Larian has always had a distinct style that blends fantasy and humor. In that, they remain entertaining as ever. The story, as I've said before, took a while before showing what it is truly about, but once it did, it remained engaging throughout. The plot itself isn't as good as an Obsidian would make it, and the characters are more threadbare than Bioware would craft them - but they're good, make no mistake.

I've heard some confusion from longtime fans of the Divinity series about if this game is a prequel or a sequel to some earlier games in the franchise. There doesn't seem to be much consensus, as it could be either, with radically different implications for each possibility. As a person who hasn't played the games that more directly tie into this one, such as Divine Divinity and the Dragon Knight games, things can sometimes seem disjointed and barely explained. Lucian, the Black Ring, Deathfog and the fall of the elven kingdoms, Source and Sourcerers(and how it is different from ordinary magic), Godwoken - It all took a while to fit into place.

And Malady? I was profoundly confused. I like the character, but she seems to drop from the sky at the end of Act I and takes the reins of the entire plot with little to no explanation about the whos, whys and whats. And- heck, Windego, the game's intro narrator. Why she narrates the plot, and seems to take such an important role in narrating the ending - is a mystery.

The game's characters are mostly serviceable. The pre-built party members are a cut above the rest. Well, all except Beast. I remain disappointed how dwarves are depressingly similar in all of fantasy. Putting on a pirate hat doesn't make one different enough. They even have elves in Divinity be gangly cannibalistic weirdos - but dwarves remain dwarves.

The endings are also a disjointed mess, full of moving parts and stuffed at the end of a final battle that ends rather abruptly(and lets not forget the blatantly defective or just badly designed Anathema questline, which pays off about as much as the Mutated Toe in Fallout 2). Still, there's no denying that they're a better payoff than, let's say, Tyranny's endings.

The cRPG genre has fierce competition in story and writing, and I believe that Larian found a handy way to go about things: The interveawing between the main plot and the individual (pre-built)character stories. The grandiose story runs the risk of making a protagonist feel like a nameless, faceless nobody that murderhobos his way to the end - but each character's personal quest is craftily sewn into the world's larger story, which gives precious context and a feeling of being connected to the game's events. This shouldn't be overlooked.

Finally, Original Sin's Pet Pal talent returns triumphantly, allowing you to speak to each and every animal in the game, which not only grants you access to tons of new quests and content, but also up the comedic factor by several orders of magnitude. I will never forget the amazing bringing the sole survivor chick Peeper on an epic journey to find his Sourcerer father, the epic rooster Magicockarel.

In Conclusion

It's pretty good! A mechanics-focused cRPG that teleports you♥♥♥♥♥first into a barrel of fun.

This game is an experience you owe to yourself. So much to do. So many options. Play how you want. Be who you want to be. Superb single player story. Divine multiplayer experience. I've squeezed every ounce of enjoyment I'm going to get from this game and my only regret is that I can never experience the magic of this masterpiece for the first time again.

Simply one of the best games i played in recent years. Easily GOTY 2017.

I ended up not playing my single player campaign as I me and a couple of friends had a co-op campaign/slaughter going which was simply so much fun. Things ALWAYS went wrong, someone always said the wrong thing, or stole the wrong thing or attacked the wrong person.

Haven't had so much enjoyable chaos in an RPG that I can ever remember. Would recommend it for the solid single player RPG that it is but as a Co-op RPG. It is unsurpassed by any game.

Would recommend it to anyone, especially if they have friends to co-op it with.

I buy almost almost all of my games months or years after they come out and after they are deeply discounted because I am both cheap and patient. I paid full price for this one, and I am very pleased with the purchase.

The application of turn-based combat mechanics to old-school RPG gameplay makes Divinity a very worthwhile experience. It's like Neverwinter Nights had a beautiful lovechild with Xcom. It's also a huge game with huge number of ways to play, and I particularly like that you can play it local-coop. My wife and I are always in the market for a good couch-coop game, and this one is spectacular.

My only complaint with the gameplay is that there is a LOT of inventory management required, at least if you want to i. have adequate gold and ii. don't want your inventory to look like a crazy bag lady got a hold of it. I've also found the game to be pretty buggy at times, though it's only actually crashed once in more than a hundred hours of gameplay.